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Colorado Springs shooting — Last year, the United States went through a number of mass shootings that marked a bloody chapter in the country’s history pages.

Among the numerous shootings that occurred in 2022 was the Colorado Springs shooting, which led to the death of five people and left 19 injured.

The sentence

Anderson Lee Aldrich, 23, was accused of using an AR-style rifle at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs.

Aldrich was sentenced on Monday to five consecutive life sentences.

The result of their Colorado Springs shooting massacre led to five consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.

Judge Michael McHenry punished him further by sentencing him to an additional 2,208 years in prison for the attempted murder charge.

Furthermore, Aldrich received a four-year sentence for bias-motivated charges.

In other states,their actions are close to hate-crime charges.

Prosecutors would have sought the death penalty, but were unable to as Colorado abolished it in 2020, making them the 22nd state to remove the death penalty.

Aftermath

During Aldrich’s impact statements on Monday, some of the families of the victims killed and wounded urged the judge to give him the harshest punishment available.

“Please your honor, I’m pleading with you,” said Cheryl Norton, a mother whose daughter, Ashtin Gamblin, was shot nine times but escaped death. “Lock this animal away to the depths of hell.”

According to Norton, her daughter was covered in the blood of another shooting victim, Daniel Aston.

Unfortunately, Aston did not survive the Colorado Springs shooting.

The other four victims who passed away from the heinous crime include:

• Raymond Green Vance
• Kelly Loving
• Derrick Rump
• Ashley Paugh

All five were either employees or frequent visitors of Club Q.

The club brought in people from all kinds of backgrounds and orientation.

The city had been long associated with a history of being anti-gay, but Club Q was among the few safe havens that welcomed members of the LGBTQ community.

Previous charges

Anderson Lee Aldrich identifies as nonbinary with they/them pronouns.

They were charged with more than 300 state counts for the Colorado Springs shooting, which includes:

• Assault
• Attempted murder
• Hate crimes
• Murder

According to Ed Sanders, a victim who was shot when they were sitting in the back of the club, Aldrich should not have access to an assault-style rifle to begin with.

He spoke to the court on Monday, saying:

“Assault weapons are way too easy to access.”

While they finally received his sentence for the Colorado Springs shooting, it wasn’t the first time they had a run-in with the law.

In 2021, they were charged with felony menacing and first-degree kidnapping.

Aldrich also allegedly made a bomb threat.

However, the charges were later dropped, with the records sealed for an unknown reason.

Red-flag law

Colorado already has a red-flag law in place, which temporarily removes gun access from people who could be dangerous to themselves or others.

However, it might not have applied to Aldrich if their 2021 case wasn’t adjudicated or if someone had pursued intervention.

The red-flag law requires family members, police, or associates to actively pursue the process of temporarily removing gun access from people who could potentially harm them.

Ashtin Gamblin’s father, Bill Norton, slammed the amount of gun violence happening.

“We cannot allow this to become commonplace, and we cannot become complacent,” he read in a statement in court.

Other families sought stronger justice.

“Why isn’t the punishment for this much harsher?” asked Kurt Paugh, who lost his wife.

Ashley Paugh’s sister addressed her sister’s shooter directly, saying:

“My 11-year-old niece wants to forgive you because that’s what she says her mom would want her to do.”

Meanwhile, Derrick Rump’s family cannot find it in them to forgive Aldrich.

“We have no forgiveness in our heart for him,” an audio recording of Rump’s cousin played out. “We hope karma comes back around to him as hard as it can and as often as it can.”

‘We hope he never has another day of peace.”

Also Read: Texas Mall Shooting Claims Lives of Parents and 3-Year-Old

2022 shootings

The Colorado Springs shooting victims were among over 642 people killed in US mass shootings last year.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, mass shootings have four or more people shot, excluding the shooter themselves.

In 2023, the rates got worse, with at least 385 people killed in the first 177 days.

The sentence of Anderson Lee Aldrich comes as Pride Month comes to a close, marking a celebration and heightened tension.

Pride Month in 2023 also marked the first time the civil rights organization declared a national state of emergency due to increased homophobia and transphobia.

Echoes of 2016

The Colorado Springs shooting was a dark and heavy event that evoked memories of a similar shooting in Orlando, Florida, in 2016.

The Pulse nightclub shooting suffered a heavier casualty than the Colorado Springs shooting, which saw 49 dead.

320 people were inside the club, serving last call drinks at around 2 in the morning.

Shooter Omar Mateen arrived with a semi-automatic rifle and a 9mm Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol.

He entered the building through the south entrance and started shooting.

When police arrived at the scene, he started a hostage situation in one of the bathrooms.

A standoff that lasted over three hours ended when the police rammed an armored vehicle through a wall in the bathroom, drawing the shooter out and leading to a shootout with at least eleven officers.

Omar Mateen was shot eight times.